OpenEMR Success Stories

Overview

This page is part of an ongoing project to list and describe successful deployments of OpenEMR. Please refer to this presentation to understand the goal of this page and how to add an entry.

Disclaimer: This list will not represent the bulk of OpenEMR users because institutions don't have to make public which open source software they use. However, In the US, it has been estimated that there are more than 5,000 installations of OpenEMR in physician offices and other small healthcare facilities serving more than 30 million patients. Internationally, it has been estimated that OpenEMR is installed in over 15,000 healthcare facilities, translating into more than 45,000 practitioners using the system which are serving greater than 90 million patients. For more information, including data citations, please see Adoption information.

Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico, and the success of OpenEMR customers (November 2017)

See Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico, and the success of OpenEMR customers article for this success story.

Chicago Medical and Urgent Care Centers (July 2017)

This Chicago-based organization has successfully deployed OpenEMR to a handful of their care centers. With high-tech medical equipment and dozens of passionate and knowledgeable medical professionals, this organization offers patients an integrated approach to their overall care. The centers boast an impressive amount of medical services such as family medicine, plastic surgery, spine and joint physical therapy, preventative and family dentistry, and sleep therapy.

Leveraging the expertise of Open Med Practice, each of these data-intensive facilities are running the latest OpenEMR v5 software with customizations to meet their specific workflows, all in the name of patient outcomes.

Pohnpei Community Health Center of Micronesia goes Paperless (April 2017)

Pohnpei Community Health Center (PCHC), a federally funded clinic, was challenged with the task of going digital with limited internet connectivity. PCHC needed a customized, easy to use, and scalable system with the goal of enabling better operational efficiency in terms of handling medical documents and improved productivity.

With the help of Pacific Island Health Officers Association (PIHOA) and passionate open source support from Dr. Mark Durand, ViSolve customized OpenEMR for PCHC’s deployment.

PCHC transitioned successfully into a paperless environment, enabling digitized workflows such as front office registration, dispensing medicine, bill processing, and checking out patients from the clinic.

ViSolve's on-site training and 24/7 support for PCHC doctors, clinicians, and front office staff made the migration a smooth and a successful one with a customized OpenEMR solution.

Anesthesiologist in Tennessee (April 2017)

A specialty, sole practitioner clinic in Tennessee has recently deployed OpenEMR to meet his needs. When asked about the strong points of the system, this practitioner pointed to the adaptability and customizability of OpenEMR. Moreover, he notes that OpenEMR allows him to "quickly adapt to aggressive changes in government and insurance company policies".

With the help of Open Med Practice, this clinic has been able to adapt to national and local changes in regulations to stay competitive.

Leading Academic Medical University (March 2017)

The Neurology IT department of a top Ivy League Academic Medical Center was challenged with the task of providing Continuous EEG monitoring of patients for their physicians. This solution would also need to integrate with existing medical systems. Dissatisfied with the available off the shelf product offerings, the department noted that a customizable solution was necessary to meet the requirements of the physicians and faculty.

With the help of ViSolve, the department deployed a customized OpenEMR solution to provide Continuous EEG monitoring functionality and systems integration.

The open source nature of OpenEMR enables and encourages customizations to meet the specific needs of healthcare providers internationally. Users can deploy and customize OpenEMR to meet their needs, whether it be done independently with free community support or with one of many professional OpenEMR vendors.

George Mason University Safety Net Clinic (March 2017)

While the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, and Medicaid help many US citizens, there are still certain gaps with access to care. Luckily, charitable "Safety Net" clinics can be found all around the country. One such clinic was recently deployed by the George Mason University, with the help of Open Med Practice.

Joyce, an essential project member, notes "The clinic will be able to capture and control patient data for improved clinical decisions and future research".

Outside of the implementation, Joyce describes the usage of OpenEMR in the classroom "It allowed me to demonstrate the flexibility, reliability, and usefulness of open-source systems to faculty and students at George Mason University. Due to OpenEMR's ease of use, we will also use it as a platform to train nursing students in our Sim Lab and for our Health Administration & Policy students to practice data management and health informatics".

Spanish-speaking Clinic in Argentina (October 2016)

A 60-bed clinic, Ados, Puerto Madryn, with 100 users and 10,000 patients so far, has successfully deployed OpenEMR on a capable Windows server.

Netic Infoservices installed OpenEMR with Spanish-translated documentation and terminology as well as diagnostic codes adapted to the Spanish International Code for Diseases. Outside of the translation work, this installation included a large data import of health insurance entities from the Argentine health system, custom administrative reports to track uninsured patients, and Gynecology forms based on specific provider requirements.

The providers are slowly adopting the system, with help of a few committed users and remote support from Netic Infoservices.

Trincay Medical Center, Cayman Islands (August 2016)

Dr. Adamo and his group of 18 were using Amazing Charts and wanted to migrate to an "anywhere access" electronic medical records system.

Below is the list of what Trincay wwas looking for when considering a new system:

• A cloud-based EMR system
• An ICD-10 based system (Amazing Charts software used ICD-9, however, all Cayman Island insurers were soon moving to ICD-10)
• An integrated billing system, compatible with the insurance providers that Trincay works with
• Electronic prescriptions
• An ability to migrate Amazing Charts patients
• Assistance with general configuration, particularly for doctors charts/personalized consultation sheets and billing
• Integration of current CPT codes and customary fees provided for Cayman Islands (Excel files)
• Although not required, HIPAA compliance

With the help of Open Med Practice, Trincay Medical Center's needs were met by deploying OpenEMR in a secure cloud environment along with a migrated patient list of over 20,000 patients.

Primary Care Providers in Vermont (April 2014)

A multi-practitioner clinic in Vermont, Granite City Medical Associates dba Mark Yorra MD, deployed OpenEMR in 2012 and successfully achieved Meaningful Use in 2014. Dr. Yorra was gracious in his remarks regarding his practices' use of OpenEMR. "I certainly appreciate the availability of OpenEMR as a way to begin using an EMR, and was quite amazed that we were able to achieve meaningful use criteria relatively painlessly. The EMR brought our small primary care office into the modern world. Thank you for your role [1] in getting us up and running with it."

Saint Lucia Pain Institute and Clinic (February 2014)

Dr. Winston Parris is an internationally renowned pioneer in pain management, Professor Emeritus at Duke, and a provider at the Saint Lucia Pain Institute as well as various organizations in the US. Dr. Parris has received accolades from Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain and the Government of Saint Lucia for his numerous contributions to the field.

Leveraging the expertise of ACE Health Solutions, Dr. Parris and his colleagues at the Saint Lucia Pain Institute are now using OpenEMR. Having gone from paper to a proprietary solution to OpenEMR, the institute realizes the benefits of a fully computerized and open source EHR solution.

Hearing Clinic in Ontario (October 2012)

The following is a letter from an employee of an Ontario-based Hearing Clinic. In this letter, he briefly describes his successful OpenEMR deployment.

Hello,

We have recently installed OpenEMR into a production environment. We run a Hearing Clinic with approximately 15 employees, and 7 offices spread out over a small geographical area in Ontario, Canada.

OpenEMR runs on a Ubuntu 12.04 Server.

Clinic in the Bahamas (September 2012)

Samuel Strachan, the cousin of a provider who runs a local clinic, expresses his thanks for the quality of OpenEMR software that he set up for the facility.

Hello

I am in the Bahamas and have just set up OpenEMR for my cousin who is opening a new clinic.

I am very impressed with the software.

I will continue to evaluate and jot down any ideas that come to mind.

Thank you for a wonderful software package.

Samuel Strachan

citixens.com/openemr

J. Samuel Strachan

Team Lead, Systems Architecture and Administration

The CitiXens Team

242.427.2060 or 242.376.6567

http://citixens.com/helpdesk

Health Facility in Kenya (September 2012)

Dr. Joash Gombe, a healthcare provider in Kenya, updates the OpenEMR community of his successful deployment.

Good day,

This is to inform you that I have just installed OpenEMR. I run a small health facility in rural Kenya and I am hopeful that this software will enable us to offer more effective services, more efficiently given our meager resources

Kind regards,

Dr Joash Gombe

Southern Tier Plastic Surgery Associates, PC (June 2012)

Dr. Mark Anthony, a plastic surgeon in upstate New York writes to an OpenEMR contributor with thanks for the high quality and cost-effective EHR solution.

Dr Bowen:

I just wanted to let you know that my medical practice has just started using OpenEMR as our EHR system.

We are a two surgeon plastic surgery practice in upstate New York. Our patient database contains approximately 50,000 patients. We are using MI Squared for hosting and support.

I am a long time fan of the Linux operating system, and FOSS. I am glad that such a high-quality product exists for EHR implementation. Though we have just started using the system, we are quite happy with it, and I recommend it to my colleagues who are looking at EHR systems. Many of them have a hard time understanding that such a product is available for free, while other systems cost over $40,000! I tell them that for that much money, their EHR system should be delivered in a brand new BMW, that they get to keep!

Anyway, thanks again for all the work you have put into developing the system, and for its continuing development.

Sincerely,

Mark S. Anthony, MD, FACS

Southern Tier Plastic Surgery Associates, PC

Siaya District Hospital in Kenya (April 2012)

After six months of careful project planning and execution, the government-sponsored Siaya District Hospital in Kenya has deployed OpenEMR for its 240 bed hospital.

With the help of Medigrail, OpenEMR was deployed on a handful of Linux servers with modern networking, security, and backup systems in place. Over 40 workstation laptops equipped with access to OpenEMR as well as other common office utilities were provided to the hospital staff. One notable challenge with this deployment was providing stable electrical power to ensure said systems were online, which the team was able to achieve.

Because the hospital workers had little training in the use of computer technology, an extensive “Train the Trainers” effort was initiated. The trainers then engaged the local hospital staff, helping to set realistic user expectations, and teaching them the basics on how to begin using the system.

With over 120,000 patient encounters at the time of this writing, the use of new computer technology and OpenEMR play a crucial role in the capabilities and expansion of this healthcare facility.